The best VPN for Android

IPVanish, despite being an American-based VPN service (a country with burdensome data retention laws) hasn’t had any significant inconveniences while protecting people’s privacy. It is lauded around the industry because of its content protection techniques and policies: it contains a no-logging privacy rule, and it includes a convenient kill switch and DNS leak protection to protect your traffic and identity at all times.

IPVanish is a perfect VPN app for those Android users that want to have advanced configuration options available. It is fast, secure, and compatible with most platforms, devices, and operating systems in the market. And with over 1,000 servers in 60 nations, it is suitable for unblocking international geo-blocked content.

Encryption and protocols

Additionally, IPVanish is among the fastest VPN services around, and it is compatible with a wide array of platforms, including Android. The brand offers several protocols as well, such as OpenVPN TCP and OpenVPN UDP, IKEv2 and IPSec (IKEv1,) with additional legacy support for L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) and PPTP (Peer to Peer Tunneling Protocol.)

Compatibility

IPVanish offers the option for users to get the app via the Google Play Store, and a direct APK download. You can find guides on the website about how to manually install and set up PPTP, L2TP, and IKEv2 for Android.

The Android app offers several configuration options, such as startup behavior, updates, kill switch, DNS leak protection, obfuscation, port number, IP disguising frequency, DNS configuration, local client log, and more.

IPVanish offers default OpenVPN configuration in its Android app, with AES 256-bit encryption and support for Android 4.0.3 or higher versions. There are over 1,000 servers across 80 total locations (60 nations in general,) a SOCKS5 web proxy free to use, unlimited bandwidth, over 40,000 IP addresses, anonymous torrenting, unlimited P2P traffic, ten simultaneous connections, and a week-long money-back guarantee.

Pricing

The prices are a bit lower than the average for the industry which is great considering the great features they have: the monthly plan costs $5 per month, but you can access discounts in the three-month plan ($4.50) and the yearly version ( $3.25, which is a 73 % percent discount).

IPVanish works with Netflix and is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Windows phones, Ubuntu, Chromebook, and some VPN routers.

The VPN is full of options, each one with its respective strong points and weaknesses. ExpressVPN, however, is recognized as one of the best for Android devices because it offers an all-around package that includes fast speeds, excellent privacy measures, and robust encryption.

Encryption and protocols

ExpressVPN is arguably the best VPN for Android devices because it is the complete package. Its content protection tools and measures are highly effective, including military-grade AES 256-bit encryption, a myriad of protocols (OpenVPN TCP and UDP, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, IKEv2, and SSTP,) a no-logging policy, British Virgin Islands jurisdiction (where there are no notable data retention laws,) DNS leak protection, split tunneling, and a kill switch. It is a speedy brand with a broad network worldwide.

The AES-256 cipher comes with an RSA-4096 handshake and SHA-512 HMAC hash authentication. The Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) key exchanges for data channel encryption offer perfect forward secrecy, as well.

Compatibility

The company is highly compatible, as well: it has apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, routers, and of course, the one that concerns us, Android. As a fun fact, ExpressVPN works with several devices and platforms, such as Apple TV, Fire TV, Smart TV, PlayStation, and the Android TV box, and it has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

The ExpressVPN Android app is compatible with the Pie, Oreo, Nougat, Marshmallow, and Lollipop releases, with secure APK for Android 9, Android 8, Android 7, Android 6 and Android 5. You can easily use one of the safest VPN brands to browse, play online games, stream, torrent, and perform other activities with no issues.

ExpressVPN works with the vast majority of Android smartphones, such as the Samsung, Huawei, HTC,  and others. It also goes smoothly with several Android tablets, as well: the Samsung Galaxy Tab, HTC Nexus 9; LG G Pad X and many more.

Pricing

The Android app, as well as other clients, comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The monthly service costs $12.95, and there are servers in 160 locations worldwide, including 94 countries.

PIA is a speedy, reliable VPN brand that works just fine for your Android devices. It has top-notch encryption, a no-logging policy, and more than 3,000 servers for you to find the best and most stable performance.

Pricing

Private Internet Access, often shortened to “PIA,” has been greeted with critical acclaim in the VPN community because it offers several top-end features and excellent content protection for a fraction of the price that the so-called “elite” brands usually charge. The monthly cost of maintaining a PIA VPN account is $6.95, but it can go down to the equivalent of $3.33 per every 30 days if you hire the yearly plan, and $2.91 if you get the two-year one.

Encryption

All the features offered by the service as a whole are available in the Android app: Secure VPN account, encrypted WiFi, P2P Support, broad protocol choice (PPTP, OpenVPN and L2TP/IPSec,) five devices simultaneously; ad, trackers, and malware blocking, multiple VPN gateways, unlimited speeds, bandwidth, and server switching; a SOCKS5 proxy, no traffic logs, and more.

PIA’s server network is broad, at least server-wise, because there are more than 3,245 of them! You can connect to 33 countries if you get this excellent all-around VPN app, with a seven-day money-back guarantee.

Compatibility

Private Internet Access is available for Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, and macOS, with additional browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Payment methods include Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover, PayPal, gift cards, Bitcoin, Zcash, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Cashu, OKPay, PaymentWall, Mint, AmazonPay, and more.

About PIA’s privacy practices: “PrivateInternetAccess.com does not collect or log any traffic or use of its Virtual Private Network (‘VPN’) or Proxy. For more details, go to the Support part. It also states that it “does not keep any logs, of any kind, period. We can unequivocally state that our company has not and still does not maintain metadata logs regarding when a subscriber accesses the VPN service, how long a subscriber’s use was, and what IP address a subscriber originated from. Moreover, the encryption system does not allow us to view and thus log what IP addresses a subscriber is visiting or has visited.”

PIA uses default AES 128-bit encryption, easily “upgradeable” to 256-bit. Data authentication is SHA-1 or SHA-256, while handshakes are set up with RSA-2048 public-key encryption with the ability to increase it to RSA-4096.